This US Billionaire Is Heading To Space For First-Ever Private Spacewalk

Billionaire Jared Isaacman is set to embark on his second space trip in three years on Wednesday on the Polaris Dawn mission backed by Elon Musk's SpaceX. Leaving Cape Canaveral in Florida, the 41-year-old is part of a four-person crew attempting to go further from the planet Earth than any space tourist before them in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, the New York Post reported. During the course of the five-day journey, he is also poised to become the first private citizen to complete a "spacewalk". 

Joining Mr Isaacman on Polaris Dawn will be two SpaceX engineers, Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, the first from the company to join a mission to orbit. After takeoff today, the four-person team is expected to travel into an oval-shaped orbit that extends as far as 1,400 kilometres from Earth. The space mission will aim to reach the highest orbit around Earth for a crewed mission. Ms Gillis and Ms Menon would also become the first women to make such a journey. 

Polaris Dawn space mission is expected to last about five days. Here's everything about the billionaire who is set to become the first private citizen to complete a spacewalk. 

Jared Isaacman is the founder and chief executive officer of Shift4 Payments, a firm that provides payment processing services and point-of-sale software businesses. According to Forbes, he is worth about $1.9 billion. 

The 41-year-old took up aviation as a hobby, learning how to fly fighter jets and completing a flight around the world in 61 hours, 51 minutes and 15 seconds. According to the outlet, he also co-founded Draken International, which now owns the world's largest private fleet of military jets and trains Air Force pilots. Mr Isaacman sold his majority stake in Draken for a nine-figure sum to Blackstone in 2019, and became a billionaire the following year after he took Shift4 Payments public.

The 41-year-old is now set to take flight in a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission will be the first of three planned Polaris missions funded and executed by Mr Isaacman and SpaceX for space technology development purposes. 

The upcoming mission will be Mr Isaacman's second trip to space. He first travelled to space in 2021 on a self-funded mission launched by SpaceX called Inspiration4. 

About Polaris Dawn space mission 

Polaris Dawn space mission stands out not just for its duration but also for its scientific goals and the risks involved. Mr Isaacman and his three crewmates will travel farther from Earth than any space mission conducted since NASA's Apollo flights in the 1970s. According to the New York Post, the crew will also conduct research on radiation exposure in space, and valuable data for future missions to the moon and Mars.

Also Read | Astronomers Discover Object 500 Trillion Times Brighter Than The Sun

On the third day of their journey, Mr Isaacman and Ms Gillis will perform space tourism first by opening the hatch of their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. Although described as a spacewalk, this involves leaning out of the capsule while tethered, exposing them to the harsh environment of outer space. The two will each spend about 15 minutes outside the spacecraft to test the spacesuits, connected to the ship by 12-foot long umbilical cords that will provide oxygen. 

The crew will pass through Earth's Van Allen radiation belts, where dangerous amounts of radiation will be present, and they will conduct an experiment to determine whether the radiation in space can take X-ray images without an X-ray machine, the Forbes reported. 

Notably, the mission is expected to take off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida between 3:38 and 7:09 am ET Wednesday - a 24-hour delay from the company's previous launch target. 

SpaceX said in a social media post Monday that it pushed the launch time back in order to take "a closer look at a ground-side helium leak" on a piece a equipment designed to detach from the rocket during takeoff.